An Interactive Electro-Acoustic Demonstration

by Krispen Hartung

Electro-Acoustic Music

“Electro-Acoustic music thrives in more unfamiliar territory; the styles that emerge are often dictated by the technology itself. Rather than sampling or synthesizing acoustic sounds to electronically replicate them, these composers tend to mutate the original timbres, sometimes to an unrecognizable state. True artists in the genre also create their own sounds (as opposed to using the preset sounds that come with modern synthesizers). In progressive electro-acoustic music, the electronics play an equal if not greater part in the overall concept. Acoustic instruments performed in real time are usually processed through reverb, harmonizing, and so on, which adds an entirely new dimension to the player's technique. At best, this music opens up new worlds of listening, thinking, and feeling.”

– All Music Guide

The Demonstration

This demonstration allows you to experience the fundamental principles behind electro-acoustic music.   It features three acoustic instruments as original sound sources: The tongue drum, a music box installed on a small acoustic guitar, and the “Joe Rut Machine.”   The sounds of these three instruments are routed into a laptop computer, which is running Cycling ‘74’s software program, MAX/MSP. The software program is running a custom “patch” that randomly chooses various effects and sound manipulators, randomly alters the parameters of those effects, and randomly samples and plays back the final output in real time.  In essence, your spontaneous input is accompanied by the spontaneous input of the computer, resulting in hybrid human-machine improvisational performance